


Vengeance

by beccabuchanans (vestigialwords)



Series: Scourge [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3226148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vestigialwords/pseuds/beccabuchanans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team chases tips about HYDRA safehouses and bunkers across the world, but every single time they put wheels-down on the Bus, they find the facilities already razed: a bloodbath, bodies with HYDRA insignia sewn onto lab coats and tactical vests strewn haphazardly through the halls; a bonfire where a building should be; and on one memorable occasion, a cavernous hole in the ground, so deep that the glow stick Mac dropped disappeared before hitting bottom.</p><p>Skye feels just about ready to scream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vengeance

**Author's Note:**

> Expanded slightly from a ficlet originally posted [on tumblr](http://jakejensen.co.vu/post/107809993354/in-light-of-bucky-and-daisys-comics-team-up-can).

There's not a loyal agent among them who doesn't have a bone or two to pick with HYDRA, but for some of them it's more personal than others. Fitz and Simmons dance around each other in the lab like they haven't quite figured out how they fit together anymore. Coulson doesn't smile as much as he used to, and when he does, he's like a rubber band, stretched to its limit, ready to snap. May spends so much time in the gym that they've all taken to calling her favorite punching bag "Grant." But Skye in particular carries the pain of Ward's betrayal deep in her bones. It sits in her gut like a fifty-pound weight. The mere thought of her former S.O. makes her stomach heave and her eyes dart to find the nearest trashcan.

The team chases tips about HYDRA safehouses and bunkers across the world, but every single time they put wheels-down on the Bus, they find the facilities already razed: a bloodbath, bodies with HYDRA insignia sewn onto lab coats and tactical vests strewn haphazardly through the halls; a bonfire where a building should be; and on one memorable occasion, a cavernous hole in the ground, so deep that the glow stick Mac dropped disappeared before hitting bottom.

Skye feels just about ready to scream. The need for catharsis eats away at her from the inside out. It's an itch beneath her skin, a constant voice nagging at the back of her mind, a vibration in her chest that keeps her from falling asleep. So she throws herself back into her work.

The buildings are damaged and the personnel are dead, but every once in a while Fitz's drones recover a hard drive or communications equipment. He hands them over to her with an apologetic smile that says "I wish I had more for you." She hugs him, kisses his cheek, and loses hours of sleep tracing the connections and correspondences back to new facilities. They're always too late. Buildings have been razed, troops have been slaughtered, nothing to do but count the bodies and recover whatever intelligence hasn't been destroyed. 

She pours over data until her eyes ache from staring at backlit computer screens, popping pain pills trying to prevent her headaches from becoming full-blown migraines. She subsists this way for months until she collapses coming down the Bus' spiral staircase. Coulson confiscates her badge and sends her home for three days of R&R.

Of course, she doesn't sleep. Sleep is for the weak and for people who aren't sick for vengeance.

It's two o'clock in the morning when the pieces click together. Her fingers still on the keyboard as her computer spits out the decryption she'd been trying to crack for weeks. There's a HYDRA lab located not even ten miles north of her apartment. (What are the odds, really?) There's no time to call for backup, and she's not supposed to be working anyway. But she's been trained by the best (Agent May, forever Agent May; never _him_ ), and with her newly awakened powers, (seismic vibration, what the hell?), she's not terribly worried.

It only takes her twenty minutes to get there, but when she skids into the lot in the SUV she boosted from her least-favorite neighbor, she finds that someone has beaten her there. 

Barely.

She stops dead in her tracks when she notices him. So the rumors are true. His hair is longer than the war reels, shaggy, and his face is scruffy and unwashed. She'd seen pictures of the metal arm in SHIELD case files, grainy quasi-enhanced images of suspected Winter Soldier sightings paperclipped into old SHIELD case files, glimpses from the limited security footage recovered from the helicarriers that Captain America had landed gracelessly in the Potomac. She always imagined that it would be unsettling to see, unnatural and threatening, like the Deathlok prostheses on Mike. It pulled his stance slightly left, but other than that, he carried it truly like a part of his body. It even moves like a real arm, but glints brightly in the moonlight, the red star on his bicep all but buffed away with what appears to have been a rough grain sandpaper.

Bucky Barnes.

He is a ghost of the cheeky-faced soldier who followed Captain America through the battlefields of Europe, but it's unmistakably him. He looks at her through sallow unseeing eyes. His gun rises to her face like a reflex, a machine executing a pre-programmed response to the stimulus of her intrusion, and she holds her hands up in surrender.

Skye takes several slow steps, projecting her intentions as she steps around him, careful not to make any sudden movements as she circles him. When she finally reaches a point where she's standing between him and the HYDRA base in from of them, she turns. She's not confident that he won't put a bullet through her head, but she's hoping that his curiosity will get the better of him. She lowers her hands until her arms are stretched out to her sides, palms turned down toward the ground. A long, tense moment passes before the rumbling starts. It's faint at first, starting at her core and swelling outward from her belly until the vibrations cascade through her body and down into the earth.

Bucky takes a few steps back, his eyes wide when the ground starts trembling beneath his feet. In front of them, the warehouse shudders, bricks crumbling into dust and metal groaning under the sudden twisting and churning of the earth. When Skye finally lowers her hands, all that remains of the base is a pile of rubble and a column of thick black smoke rising defiantly into the starry sky. She turns to him and offers her hand with a cheery grin.

"I think we can help each other. My name is Skye."

A smile ghosts over Bucky's face, and he lowers his weapon. He reaches out and accepts her handshake--his hand is twice the size of hers, but his grip is firm.

Together it takes a matter of days to locate the safehouse where Agent Grant Ward has holed himself up. He can't help but tremble with fear when he looks up to see HYDRA's precious asset kicking his front door off its hinges. But it's not until Skye steps out from behind him that Ward realizes that he is well and truly screwed.


End file.
